U.S. Postal Service to Honor Rosa Parks

U.S. Postal Service to Honor Rosa Parks

The civil rights icon will be celebrated with a Forever Stamp.

Published January 31, 2013

(Photo: Courtesy US Postal Service)

The U.S. Postal Service is set to honor civil rights icon Rosa Parks for her 100th birthday with two stamp dedication events in Dearborn and Detroit, Michigan. Detroit will be the first city to sell the Rosa Parks Forever Stamp at a ceremony at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African-American History. The stamp, illustrated by stamp artist Thomas Blackshear II, is a gouache (similar to watercolor but modified to make it non-transparent) portrait of the activist in her younger days.

The celebration will be held on Parks' 100th birthday on February 4, 2013, at 7:30 a.m. in Detroit and at 10:45 a.m. in Dearborn at the Henry Ford Museum, where the Rosa Parks bus is on permanent display. Admission to both museums is free that day.

Parks' refusal to give up her bus seat to a white man and subsequent arrest sparked a nationwide push for desegregation and she's since been awarded other honors such as the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Gold Medal and the Spingarn Medal, the highest award of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

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